Ken Simpler is the Delaware state treasurer. He is running for re-election as a Republican in the Nov. 6 election.

If you’re looking for conflict and discord in this election season, you’re going to have little trouble finding it. Political contests are built around highlighting differences.

As the only head of an elected state office running for re-election this year, let me offer a contrast that may surprise you: the popular image of public officials acting ever more tribally versus the reality of statewide officers of both parties working together to solve Delaware’s problems.

Our state’s finances are not headed by a single CFO, as they would be in most private companies, but rather by a team of elected officials and political appointees of both major parties, including the state treasurer, the auditor of accounts, the secretary of finance, the budget director and the controller general.

Delaware is fortunate to have such a team of financial officers — each of whom has relevant expertise.

All of us have to function together to ensure that the state operates effectively — that it can collect revenues, account for appropriations, effect payments, invest funds and balance its books. Far from being divided, Delaware’s fiscal heads have worked in ever-greater coordination during my four-year term, recently agreeing to form a “Financial Officers Roundtable” to resolve interagency challenges.

Democratic Govs. Jack Markell and John Carney have appointed Republicans, like Tom Wagner and me, to committees and councils to improve on these working relationships. Together, we have fashioned policies to stabilize our revenue portfolio, build better controls into our spending decisions and seek out and implement efficiency and accountability measures across state government.

The General Assembly has also seen fit over time to put statewide elected officials of both parties together on panels and boards that determine issues from state employee benefits to prisoner commutations to the issuance of general obligation debt. I have served on more than a half-dozen such groups with Democrats holding the offices of lieutenant governor and insurance commissioner.

In all these cases, and contrary to what may be popular conception, these arrangements work. Real decisions get made and actions get taken every day, on a consensual and oftentimes unanimous basis.

Curiously, the hardest partisans of both political parties attack this kind of bipartisanship as evidence of an insidious “Delaware Way,” a political get-along, go-along manner of doing business. As a relative newcomer to the political scene, I also dispute this characterization.

Policy agreement does not come automatically, but only after meaningful discourse, resolution of credible differences and trust that all parties are operating in good faith. This may fly in the face of the political ads you are seeing right now, but in my limited time in public office, this is what I have both witnessed and experienced.

Look just this fall at some of the most significant policy decisions that will shape state government operations and how they are being resolved by our Democratic and Republican statewide officeholders:

• Gov. Carney’s Executive Order 21 requires the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Committee to implement historic reforms to the budget process this year that had been proposed by a bipartisan Advisory Panel on Fiscal Controls and Budget Stabilization. A special meeting of DEFAC’s Expenditure Committee consisting of Democratic and Republican officeholders and appointees will take up these challenges next month.

• In December, the governor will receive the first full year report of the Government Efficiency and Accountability Review Board. The suggestions that come from statewide officeholders and Cabinet secretaries of both political parties will heavily shape the governor’s recommended budget and strategic priorities.

• The State Employee Benefits Committee last month determined to create additional groups to focus on strategic planning for, and financial solvency of, the state’s $800 million Group Health Insurance Plan. Elected and appointed Democratic and Republican officials share common goals of bending the health cost curve and ensuring high-quality care for state workers and Delaware’s citizens.

• Prior to year end, the Cash Management Policy Board will take under consideration the recommendations of a multiyear review and competitive bid for all of the state’s banking services. This bipartisan group of experts is expected to endorse sweeping changes to the network through which the state collects and distributes roughly $10 billion.

I am proud to serve on all these councils and panels with my colleagues from across the aisle. Work in our divided government can be slow and unsteady, but the direction is positive and the effort is constructive.

For those disillusioned with the current state of political affairs, take heart this election season. After four years in public office, I see far more reason to be hopeful than cynical.